There was one fact about Martinique which was worth more to me than all the data put together. I had a servant—a French woman—who for years took care of the children.
Once upon a time she had lived in the household of the Governor of Martinique, after he had returned to Paris; and she had darned his stockings; think of it! My good Elise had darned the stockings of the Governor of Martinique, and many a time she had darned mine! Wasn’t that enough to establish a lasting bond of interest between Martinique and the wanderer from the North?
But these dark things in the water—where do they belong? Elise and the Governor of Martinique’s stocking could never help us settle that question. As I said, they swarmed about the ship like so many insects. They were an entirely different type of people from the black imps of St. Thomas.
At St. Thomas the native was quite as ready with his guffaw as he was with his oaths. He was a big African animal, black as coal, with the flat nose and heavy lips, with all the idiosyncrasies we know so well; a somewhat exaggerated, wilder, freer type than the Ethiopian we meet in our Southern States. But these natives of Martinique were altogether different from the blacks of St. Thomas. Their bodies were often of the most beautiful copper colour, verging on red; their features were regular, and in some cases rather attractive,—rare cases these, however; their expressions were fierce and saturnine, even in the youngest children of eight or ten years. They had to a marked degree that animal trait of fixing their eyes upon an object and never leaving it until what they wished had been granted them.
These swarms of men and boys had come out to dive for coins—silver preferred—and how had they come? Mostly in slender canoes, some seven to ten feet in length, varying in dimensions according to the size of the occupant, one boy in each canoe. These flimsy shells were about a foot to fifteen inches wide, and six or eight inches deep, made of thin boards or even the rough sides of light packing-cases skilfully joined together and payed up with pitch. They were flat-bottomed, sharp at both ends and barely wide enough for the single occupant to sit in, and without seats, oars, or paddles. In what one might call the bow—if bow there is to such a craft—the low sides were bridged over and boxed in underneath, with a narrow slit in the top of this tiny locker into which to drop the captured pennies. This was the diver’s bank, where he deposited his capital after his mouth was too full to hold more. In lieu of paddles, he had a bit of thin board about the size of a cigar-box cover in each hand; sometimes this artificial fin had a loop to fit back of the hand, and sometimes the little fellows would use only their hands to paddle themselves about, sitting well down, leaning forward, darting rapidly through the water. Meanwhile some bigger boys and men appeared, two or three together, in larger skiffs propelled by oars or paddles.
The divers whisk in and out among the host (for there were also other larger boats now come from shore to see us) with marvellous skill, and when we toss a coin into the clear sea, away go the paddles and boats, and down go a half-dozen copper-coloured bodies, each making for the same shining point, and all we can see for awhile is several pairs of whitish soles gleaming under the water, and sometimes the short turmoil of a fight below the surface; then up comes a sputtering heathen with the coin in his hand, to show he has found it. Into his mouth it goes and then off he chases for the abandoned canoe, which by this time is full of water and looks a hopeless derelict. But that is nothing to this semi-aquatic creature, for he grasps the two sides of the boat, gives it a dexterous roll and lift combined, emptying most of the water, bails out the rest with a rapid movement of his hands, throws his body across the canoe and is inside before it has time to capsize.
